1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a method for manufacturing a light emitting element.
2. Related Art
As applications of LED (light emitting diode) elements have expanded in recent years, there has been a need for higher brightness. Accordingly, it has been proposed to provide the surface of a sapphire substrate that comes into contact with a semiconductor layer, with convex components that allow light propagating horizontally through the semiconductor layer to be extracted outside an element (e.g., JP2008-177528A, and JP2012-160502A).
Also, one division method in which individual LED elements are obtained from a wafer is laser scribing (laser dicing), in which a laser beam is focused in the interior or on the surface of the object to be divided (e.g., wafer such as a sapphire substrate), a modified part is formed that will serve as the starting point for division, and a wafer is divided by applying external force to the wafer to create grooves or cracks from the modified part (e.g., JP2008-98465A).
With an LED element such as this, the laser beam used for laser scribing can sometimes damage the semiconductor layer, which degrades the element's characteristics. The effect of laser beam irradiation on the semiconductor layer can be minimized by lowering the laser output or reducing the number of times laser irradiation is performed, but on the other hand, this tends to increase the take time, and diminish the yield, which is attributable to such factors as the locations that remain undivided during wafer dividing, or uneven shape of the element after dividing. Also, the thicker is the wafer, the higher the laser output has to be, or the more times irradiation has to be performed, to divide the wafers, so the risk that the semiconductor layer will be damaged is higher.